Deeplinks Blog posts about DMCA Rulemaking

Last week, facing pressure from the Federal Communications Commission, the major wireless carriers promised to unlock mobile devices so that they can be used on other carriers' networks when the customer's contract has expired. This follows the outcry early this year over the Library of Congress's decision to remove legal protection against Digital Millennium Copyright Act suits for people who unlock their devices to change carriers.

After months of negotiations, Tom Wheeler—the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)—thinks it’s about time for consumers to be able to unlock their phones without fear of breaking the law. He made that much clear in a letter sent Thursday [pdf] to the president and CEO of CTIA, the industry group that maintains a Consumer Code that most carriers follow. In that letter, Wheeler proposes a December deadline for CTIA to update that code to include meaningful unlocking provisions—or face FCC regulations.

According to Netanel, one often-overlooked aspect of the opinion is that the Court explicitly identified fair use as an essential “First Amendment accommodation” that cannot be disturbed if copyright law is to survive First Amendment scrutiny. In the process, the Court may have poked a hole in the already shaky constitutional justifications for anti-user sections of copyright law.